It's nice that music-streaming service Spotify offers a free, ad-supported version, and most of the time we don't mind listening to an ad or two for the privilege. But those audio ads can be a serious buzzkill when they interrupt your party music. Here's how to automatically mute ads in Spotify and keep the flow in your playlists.

Windows

Blockify is far and away the best Spotify ad blocker for Windows. It sits in your system tray and mutes Spotify (or your computer, your choice) whenever it detects an audio ad. It'll unmute Spotify when the ad finishes playing.

Better yet, though, Blockify can do more than just mute ads: It also adds customizable hotkeys to Spotify, so you can skip tracks, play, pause, shuffle, and change the volume with keyboard shortcuts. It also allows you to play a substitute MP3 from your Music folder when it mutes an ad—that way, you don't have any empty space between songs. When it detects an ad, it will mute Spotify, play a random MP3 from your Music folder, and then move to the next track on your Spotify playlist when that song is over, which is a really cool little feature.

Mac OS X

On OS X, you can mute ads just by downloading and running Smutefy. Smutefy sits in your menu bar, mutes Spotify whenever an ad plays, and unmutes it when the ad is over. There's no other configuration necessary, though you will need previously mentionedSoundflower installed for it to work. It also has a manual blocklist, so if any do come up, you can block them from showing up again just by clicking an option in the menu bar.

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Update: It looks like Smutefy has been abandoned, but you can still mute Spotify ads with SpotiFree, a simple AppleScript that works in a similar fashion.

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Of course, it's also worth mentioning that the best way to avoid ads in Spotify is to pay for the $5 per month "Unlimited" upgrade. If you're going to block ads all the time, you're probably better off supporting the service, but we understand that sometimes you just want to make it through a playlist without being interrupted by out-of-place music. Use with care!